When it comes to online payments, PayPal is the top of mind choice. Now, the eBay subsidiary is looking at new technologies aimed at “integrating the online marketplace’s payments arm into brick-and-mortar retail stores.”
According to an Internet Retailer report by Zak Stambor, PayPal is moving towards its vision of becoming the ultimate shopping companion. This includes using it to view mobile ads before entering a store, scanning a bar code in store, using the online money transfer’s real-time inventory search to find a local merchant that carries a particular product and of course, paying for the product via a virtual wallet. Scott Thompson, PayPal president, said in a statement in the article that “PayPal is reimagining money” both for the betterment of merchants and consumers.
The Palo Alto, California-based company has big plans to incorporate its traditionally online services into the physical marketplace. It is planning on offering customers multiple ways to pay such as entering a telephone number and a personal identification number as well as tapping a phone on a designated payment terminal. There are also plans of a card that users can pay with at credit and debit card terminals in stores.
PayPal also wants to enable customers to use their mobile devices for payment without having to go to the checkout counter, thus further strengthening the role of mobile e-commerce in the future. A video demonstrating this technology can be seen on the eBay blog. The video also shows how PayPal is planning on a scanning technology which will allow customers to receive discounts as soon they enter the store.
eBay chief executive, John Donahoe, said that PayPal hopes to roll out this point-of-sale functionalities to up to 20 national retailers by 2012. The article also noted that eBay sees this move as “fairly significant incremental opportunity that will play out over the next three to five years.” He also noted that the company would like to be instrumental in the growth of offline businesses in the same way that PayPal has been useful to online merchants around the world. However, there are still no reports on how much PayPal would charge merchants for this new offline service.
According to the report, PayPal has 100.3 million accountholders, making it one of the most significant e-commerce players in the industry today.
